Check out the website of Oscar Rodriquez.

Http://oscarrodriguez1.sites.livebooks.com

I really like his recent works. The black and grey pieces are pretty spectacular but my favorite is the hexagon half balls. Really, really like those.

Color Blocking - Bussamente style

This is the working draft of the next color blocking quilt. I think I'm going nuts but I can't find the artist in any of my notes. I thought it was Bussamente but can't find him anywhere. Guess I'll have to dig out some of the scraps of paper that I write things on. This artist was a professor at Harvard and started painting after retiring. I know I didn't make this stuff up because I have the sketches and rough drafts. He worked in primary colors and used math to figure out the angles. This will teach me to put my documentation all in one place.

Modern Quilt Guild project for IQA

I've found myself hitting the wall on art quilt projects. Lots of ideas but very little inspiration coming or enthusiasm. I think the heat and drought of this past year drained all creativity from me. So I did what I always do, go back to the basics! I have this ridiculous desire to go back and review my geometry books. It was my favorite subject in school, besides goofing off. Modern artists have always fascinated me so I decided to try and figure out how they came up with their ideas. This simple looking quilt (62x62) took over a week to work out the proportions and the look of a Piet Mondrian work without just copying one of his. I had no idea that he and Bussamente (my next project) were mathematicians who became artists when they retired. They used their math backgrounds to develop their subject and then experimented with how color played off each other and effected mood. I love this piece. The orientation in the photo is incorrect. The long green strip on the right should be at the bottom. I also picked up a great book called Sacred Geometry. Lots of ideas in that one and it makes me look at everything as a geometric equation.

Artists' Garden

Our group quilt was juried into IQA's World of Beauty. It is always such an honor to be chosen to exhibit at this incredible show. Each Oct. about 65,000 people travel from all over the world to see an amazing exhibit of quilts, take classes from world renowned teachers in all disciplines and shop. For those of you who have never been, we're talking the entire convention center in Houston, TX is full, all levels of the building! For those of us who put ourselves in that precarious spot of submitting a piece for the show and wondering if we've managed to make a piece that attracts the jurist(s), it's a long wait from submission to getting the "envelope". (now an email)

How we got here. In May of 2010 I took my mom on a "road trip" to visit Frances Holliday Alford in Grafton, VT. Since my mom is a Master Gardener we decided to visit Longwood Gardens in PA. I decided to take photos of flowers that represented my art quilt group friends. So driven by the idea that was in my mind that on the return trip home from visiting Frances, we detoured back to the Gardens for another round of photos.

The Task. Each artist was given a selection of photos and was asked to interpret it in their style or even try something new. My only parameters were the size of the block and that each piece had to be finished.

In my mind's eye I was seeing individual flowers (person) beautiful alone but together supported by the trellis (each other) accomplishing and making an incredible garden (art).

Artists involved:

Top L-R Connie Hudson (West Lake Hills), Cindy Henneke (Independence) Annie Smith (The Woodlands)

Middle L-R: Francis Holliday Alford (Grafton, VT & Austin), Leslie Jenison (San Antonio), Sherri Lipley McCauley (Lakeway)

Bottom L-R: Kathy York (Austin), Barbara Forrister (Austin), Suzan Engler (Panorama Village)

Frances Holliday Alford

Barb Forrister

Connie Hudson

Leslie Jenison

Sherri McCauley

Kathy York

Suzan Engler - Textile Artist

http://www.thewpstudio.com Annie Smith

Artists' Village House

Kathy York was the catalyst for this project. She asked a number of us to be involved in making our very own artist house to later become an Artist Village. The paragraph below explains her ideas and how she got the rest of us involved. Please check it out.

Artist Village Project
Join us for a tour of our village!! We will be having a blog tour to show you the fiber art houses made by all the participating artists in our village. See the schedule below.

This project began last summer. I was inspired by Judy Perez and the 3D houses she had made. I thought it would be an interesting project to see how different artists would interpret the challenge to make a 3D house. And as I thought about the inspiration and support I have received from others, it seemed the perfect fit to make a collaborative project and build a village. It reminded me of the old adage..."it takes a village to raise a child".
Each participant was asked to make a 3D fiber art house or houses using any techniques, but to include quilting in some aspect of their house. I asked participants to attempt to make a house that would fold flat for shipping, but slightly less than half of the houses fold flat. What can I say? Art doesn't conform well to rules. I personally was not able to make mine flat...it just didn't turn out that way! Please join us for a close up tour of the houses. Be prepared to be amazed and inspired by this wonderful collection of visual treats!
Kathy
p.s. Not all of our artists are bloggers. For the indicated artists below, the link will take you to their website to see their work!

Susan Else (website) May 2

Frances Holiday Alford May 3

Pamela Allen (website) May 4

Frieda Anderson May 5

Lisa Call May 6

Jane Davila May 9

Naomi Adams May 10

Jamie Fingal May 11

Barb Forrister May 12

Vickie Hallmark May 13

Connie Hudson May 16

Leslie Jenison May 17

Sherri McCauley May 18

Judy Perez May 19

Melanie Testa May 20

Laura Wasilowski May 23

Kathy York May 24

Artists' Village House

This is the front of the finished house. The roof is felted with various yarns some of which I dyed to get the variation in color that I was wanting to see.

When I was asked to participate in this project I was so excited. Then reality set in! How in the world do I do this and can I really make this work. A 3-D house with fabric and it's suppose to stand up by itself!
A vision of a beautiful butterfly kept popping into my head and so I decided to draw and paint a butterfly. After scaling it out I worked on PDF cotton and used Stewart Gill paints to get the depth of colors that I wanted for my butterfly. I then knitted some very garish neon lime green yarn, cut it up added my hand dyed wool roving and felted them to make the grass that the butterfly has landed on. And this became my roof!
Everything that came next was an afterthought! I loved the roof so much that I didn't want to finish the project....which is what happens to a lot of my stuff. But after procrastinating, I finally decided that the walls needed to be hand painted with windows and vines and little tiny flowers that have dimension that are totally out of scale with the butterfly. I still wanted that roof to be the only thing people noticed! After I turned it over to Kathy York I came up with so many other ways I could have made the walls....but too late. When I get it back I'm going to rework it, using the butterfly roof but take it to the next step in fantasy land!

Lonestar Turtle

A customer brought me a lonestar quilt to work on last week. I love how this one was done. It's a turtle! My favorite creature from the sea. She really did a nice job on the colors for this quilt. It is a 63x63 wall hanging for another friend's new grandson. The border has waves, the blue corners are bubbles, and the stars are curved connections.

Soy wax resist and paints on silk

Took a workshop with Ginny Eckley and my Studio 105 friends last week. This is a piece that I worked on the second day. Haven't decided on the orientation of the finished piece. So far I've had three different suggestions as to what it is....what do you see in it? I love black and white, always have and I'm feeling the urge to make a lot more of these abstract black and whites with a small amount of color.

Taking time to look around

I'm always intrigued by graffiti that shows up in difficult locations. I'm not sure when these appeared but they are beautifully done and make a great statement. These are located on the railroad bridge across Lake Lady Bird in downtown Austin, between Lamar and Congress Ave. I haven't been walking on the trail since Jan. and I don't remember them being there at that time. My daughter gave me a wonderful book at Christmas about Women and Graffiti. Most of their work was done in Europe and make a more easily recognized statement about women's health, homelessness and poverty. I would love to know who did these two sites.

Lutrador Class/Austin Fiber Artists

This was a fun Saturday class with Laura Ann Beehler. After explaining the properties of the material she turned us loose to explore! I used TAP to transfer the flower photo to the Lutrador. The edges were cut out by burning.

I really like playing with this fiber.

Fiber Artists/Charity Fundraiser

One Cause, One Wednesday, One Hundred Collages One Cause – The Fight Against Cancer. One Wednesday – February 16, 2011. One Hundred Collages – Created for this event by an all-star team of artists: Natalya Aikens, Pamela Allen, Laura Ann Beehler, Liz Berg, Pokey Bolton, Laura Cater-Woods, Jette Clover, Jane Davila, Jamie Fingal, Gloria Hansen, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Lyric Kinard, Jeanelle McCall, Linda Teddlie Minton, Karen Stiehl Osborn, BJ Parady, Judy Perez, Cynthia St. Charles, Virginia A. Spiegel The goal – Raise $8,000 for the American Cancer Society in just one day. More details and a preview of artwork: http://bit.ly/ciJ0TN Fiberart For A Cause has already donated over $205,000 to the American Cancer Society through the generosity of fiber artists and their patrons.

Beyond the Rail

Someone asked me why I was using the title Beyond the Rail. The simple answer is that on a trip to Hawaii with 53 high school kids I learned that I like "going beyond the rail". I had been to Hawaii 9 times without really seeing it. We did the usual fly in, stay in a luxury resort or an upscale condo and do the tourist things on those 9 trips. On the 10th trip, I drove a car full of 17 and 18 year olds for 4.5 wks. We camped and hiked in places that I knew were there but had never "gone over the rail" to see. You know what I'm talking about...that rail at the end of the parking lot where all the tourists stop and take pictures. This time we went around the rail and up or down the mountain to see the sights. And oh what glorious sites there are on the other side! Places where tourists don't go or at least not the non-adventurous tourists. I came back a renewed person with a totally different perspective on life. I learned that I can hike mountains for 12 mi.; I learned the hard way about going down the slippery sands on the crater, and I can even sleep on the floor and like it! Diving at night with the manta rays was the thrill of a life time. It just doesn't get much better than this.

Artists Do Lunch

Artists Do Lunch (Connie Hudson, Frances Holliday Alford, Barbara Forrester, Leslie Jension, Sherri McCauley, and Kathy York)

Our Austin Art Quilt group met at Frances Holliday Alfords' one day for lunch. Ever the doodler, Frances pulls out a piece of white cloth, throws it on the table and handed us all paint pens for doodling. After a few visits, food, and lots of doodling, we cut the tablecloth into six pieces and we all went home with a piece to paint and "work on". My piece is the top photo. After seeing it put back as one piece the decision was made to slice it up even more. We ended up with 12 pieces reattached. A black and white border was added by Leslie Jension.

New Machine

The New Machine

I finally decided to trade in my Janome 6500 for the new Janome Horizon 7700. The old one worked very well but the new one has some amazing new features. The wider throat helps with shoving lots of fabric around when quilting. It also has a straight stitch plate built in as well as a zig zag plate already attached. With the click of a button I can switch back and forth between the plates. The satin stitch is even better than on my Bernina QE. I particularly loved the ease at which I was able to free motion stitch. The speed control works very well in helping to keep the stitches uniform. I'm sure I'll discover even more as I play with the machine.